All I Want
by opalheart12
Summary: Inspired by the song All I Want by Kodaline. Crane cannot live in a world where Abbie does not exist. All he wants is to see her again.
_**A/N: I was inspired to write this when I listened to All I Want by Kodaline. Be advised that there is mention of suicide in this. I hope you life this one.**_

* * *

 _ **All I want is nothing more**_  
 _ **Than to hear you knocking at my door**_  
 _ **'Cause if I could see your face once more**_  
 _ **I could die a happy man I'm sure**_

 _ **All I Want- Kodaline**_

* * *

She was gone.

His heart and soul was gone.

This mantra repeated inside his head every waking moment. He could not focus on his mission as a Witness. What even _was_ his mission if she was not there with him? Every minute, he felt a weight on his chest unlike any he'd ever known. He lost his breath once every hour. It hadn't even been the funeral that made him feel this way. There was no body to bury, thus the denial set in longer than it should have. As long as he was in the archives, he could believe that there was a way to bring her back. But it was when he came back home- and was it even home without her?-that he was forced to face the truth.

She was well and truly gone.

Ichabod Crane was a coward. It went without saying. He could see it on Jenny's face every time she looked at him. She blamed him for Abbie's death. Death. She was dead. He had to keep telling himself that, _reminding_ himself.

He sat on the sofa in the living room, still as a statue, as he stared ahead at the black screen of the television. The Xbox beneath had collected a mountain of dust. His eyes travelled down to Abbie's laptop on the coffee table, and to his phone next to it. He reached out to pick it up and felt a stinging sensation in his eyes as he looked at the wallpaper for the millionth time that day. It was the two of them, he smiling down at her and she smiling up at him. The evening sun was behind them, casting an otherworldly glow upon her face. There was a sparkling light in her eyes and the smile on her face lit him from the inside. What he wouldn't give to see that smile again.

He noticed an alert in his messages, that there must be one he had not read yet. His stomach dropped as he saw that the message was from Abbie, dated two days before she died. It was a video from the day he'd made her coffee, but it was after he'd finished in the kitchen. She must have taken his phone during that time. There was sugar around her mouth from the donuts but he could not deny she looked happy. Fearing his reaction, he pressed the center of the screen, closing his eyes as her laughter filled the room.

" _If you can't tell already, I stole your phone."_ Her eyes darted off screen as she presumably tried to see if he was returning to the kitchen. " _You know how I am with touchy-feely stuff but...I just wanted to thank you for everything since I've been back from the catacombs. You took care of me, you made me feel like I could be normal again. I always feel like as long as we're together, we can do anything. So…"_ Her eyes trailed off past the screen again and he heard a door opening from far off. " _I love you, Crane. I didn't want anything crazy to happen again without you knowing that."_ Abbie smiled at the camera, that huge smile that made his heart soar, and he heard his own voice asking if she was ready to go yet. " _Yeah, I'm ready to go now!"_ She turned back to the camera and winked before the screen went black.

A pain unlike any he'd ever known tore through him and he dropped the phone, the shattering an echo of his own heart. An unnatural noise filled the room and he was hardly surprised to know the sound was coming from him. He could no longer stop the tears from coming. He'd tried for so long, but this was his undoing. It felt like he was being stabbed all over, like every cell in his body was rebelling against him.

He was a coward and a fool.

How could he not have told Abbie how much she meant to him, how much he loved her? She'd left this earth believing he'd never seen her message, believing he'd never loved her. He was thoroughly ashamed to be alive. He wanted out.

Crane rose from the sofa then, in search of something, _anything_ that would stop his body from shaking, that would put an end to the pain he felt inside. He glanced briefly over the knives and headed toward the bathroom and the medicine cabinet inside. If Jenny found him, he didn't want to traumatize her. He could hear his heartbeat in his ears, erratic and steady all at once. He'd never been so sure of something in all his life.

He settled on the bottle of sleeping pills Abbie had been given by a doctor a while back. She had barely ever used them. He forced himself to swallow a handful of them and walked toward the door he had not opened in weeks: the door to Abbie's room.

His breath was momentarily taken away as he realized that everything had been untouched. Except for the dust that covered nearly every surface, it looked as if Abbie might return any moment. A corner of the blankets on her was tossed back and her clothes were in a pile on the floor. The scent of coconuts and lavender lingered in the air and he took a deep breath, imagining for a moment that she would be back.

Crane's legs had gone leaden as he trudged over to her bed. He pulled himself into the bed, burying himself as deeply under the blankets as he could, pulling one of the pillows to his chest. For the first time, he really and truly allowed himself to break down. He sobbed and sobbed, all the while inhaling the fading scent of Abbie from the pillows and blankets.

"I'm sorry, Grace. I am so sorry." He choked out. He'd never called her that until now. It had always been Abbie, Lieutenant, or Miss Mills. But today it was Grace, because that was her first name and because grace is what she was for him. "You were everything, Abbie, everything. I should have told you. It should've been me. We should have gone together." His chest hurt terribly and he hoped the pills he took would do their work sometime soon.

"It should have been me. It should have been me." He sobbed into the pillow until his throat hurt, until he felt well and truly tired. He could feel sleep pulling him and he hoped that when he closed his eyes, he would wake up wherever Grace Abigail Mills was. He just wanted to be by her side again. Black spots dotted his vision and he closed his eyes, feeling a mixture of self-loathing and hope.

 _ **LATER**_

He felt heat on his back and wind in his hair. He could feel someone touching him, could feel fingers running through his hair. He was laying on something soft. Crane forced his eyes open and saw that his head was in someone's lap.

"I was wondering when you would wake up."

His heart constricted at that voice, a voice he didn't believe he would ever hear again. He turned and found Grace Abigail Mills staring down at him, a small smile on her face. Her hand rested on his forehead.

"God." he croaked out, feeling tears building in his eyes.

She rolled her eyes slightly as a chuckle escaped her. "Not quite. I missed you, too," Abbie answered as her hand began to travel across his face. "I didn't think it would be so soon. You were supposed to have a few more years before we saw each other again. What happened?"

His mouth was dry, his throat tight. "There was no point. All of it was utterly useless without you, Abbie. We are one. Without you, there is no me."

Her hand came to rest on his cheek and he closed his eyes as he leaned into her touch. "Crane, what happened? How did you end up here?"

"Where is 'here'?"

"You're deflecting."

Silence stretched between them as her smile vanished and was replaced with a look of concern. She helped him sit up and he noticed then that they were on the porch swing of their home. Confusion clouded his face as he looked around and saw that everything looked...brighter. "Where are we?"

Abbie sighed and took his hands in her own. "The after. Crane, what happened?"

He would not be able to escape her questioning so easily. He sighed as he began to looked down into his lap. "I ingested the bottle of sleeping pills previously given to you by your doctor."

"Crane!"

He could hear the disappointment in her voice. He could picture the look on her face and as he looked up, he saw that he had not been wrong. "I will not apologize."

She shook her head and sighed. "Why? What about Jenny? What about the mission? You're a Witness, Crane."

He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. "Miss Jenny will be fine. As for our mission, Witnesses are...inherited. Allegedly, two more will arise, bearing some familial connection to us. I'm not entirely sure of the specifics, nor do I care. That is not my life anymore. My life was done the day you died."

He could see tears come to Abbie's eyes as she looked at him. She held his hands tighter before pulling him to her, both crying as they held each other. He breathed her in deeply as if she were oxygen, and perhaps for him she was. "The pain was entirely too much to bear. It should have been me, Abbie. I should have gone with you. I should have told you when I had the chance…"

"Told me what?" she asked as she pulled back slightly from him.

"I saw the video you left on my telephone. You said...you said you loved me. I was a coward for not telling you every second what you meant to me, Abigail; for not thanking you for everything you'd done for me, every sacrifice you ever made. I was an idiot for waiting so long to say-"

She interrupted him with a tearful kiss. He jumped slightly in surprise but found himself drinking her in with all that he was. He needed her the way one needed water. He needed her the way one needed water. He pulled her as tightly to him as he could without them becoming one. Finally, she pulled away from him, lips swollen and pink.

"You ramble a lot, Crane."

"I love you."

"I love you, too, Crane."

It felt as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He held her hand in his and ran his thumb over her skin repeatedly. He was here, wherever 'here' was, with her and she was real. It was no dream. He didn't care anymore. His heart, his soul, his very existence was complete again. His world had been set to rights. He would never let her go again.

* * *

 ** _So you brought out the best of me_**  
 ** _A part of me I've never seen_**  
 ** _You took my soul and wiped it clean_**  
 ** _Our love was made for movie screens_**

 ** _All I Want- Kodaline_**

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 ** _A/N: Thank you for reading._**


End file.
